African-American Film Noir and Philosophy argues forcefully that African-American filmmakers have expanded film noire so that it can afford potentially emancipatory resources for challenging anti-black prejudice by provoking troubling responses in White audiences that can engender philosophical reflection upon what it means to be a racist.

Submitted by Noel Carroll Philosophy Program The Graduate Center, CUNY

Flory's masterful study of film noir's racial dimensions brilliantly illuminates the racial politics of this important genre. Readers-both academics and the general public-will gain a new appreciation of how films can be socially critical while also encouraging philosophical reflection. A must read for anyone interested in film, race and racism, philosophy or all of the above.

Professor Thomas Wartenberg - twartenb@mtholyoke.edu

In African American Film Noir and Philosophy, Dan Flory shows how African-American filmmakers – particularly those participating in the new Black film wave of the 1990s – bent noir's fatalism, chiaroscuro, and outlaw figures to expose and denounce anti-Black racism. This is film scholarship at its best - analytically rigorous, politically attuned, and imaginatively open to re-seeing the boundaries of a much-discussed genre, noir, and its role both on and off the movie screen.

Laura T. Di Summa Associate Professor William Paterson University

Rarely do philosophers engage with film theory and history as perceptively and insightfully as does Flory in this powerful and original study. African American Film Noir and Philosophy puts race firmly in the picture in the study of film noir, and innovatively makes embodied cognition and affect central to its potential for moral change. I highly recommend it.

Margrethe Bruun Vaage, professor of film studies

Professor Flory has done it again! His latest careful study of culture work and race-making shows how much we don't know, and haven't wanted to know, about film noir. This is a boon to philosophical film studies, to critical race aesthetics, and to aesthetics – and philosophy – as a whole.

Paul C. Taylor, Presidential Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Los Angeles.

This meticulously researched study details the history of film noir and its often racialized elements, culminating in the emergence of Black noir by African-American directors. Flory's sweeping, detailed discussion cogently alerts readers to the ways that film noir can shape audience attitudes in pursuit of political understanding and social justice.

Carolyn Korsmeyer, author of Things: In Touch with the Past. OR Carolyn Korsmeyer, professor emerita, University at Buffalo.